race

I did pretty well in February with the goals I set out for myself. I am going to continue the squats (modified) and organizing the house. I recently spent a few hours going through stuff in the garage and sorting stuff, getting rid of things, recycling a bunch of empty boxes we were hoarding for some reason…they weren’t even good boxes! So I am slowly and surely making my life at home a little more cleaner and simplified.

There’s a bunch of stuff I still need to go through to figure out if we are going to donate or sell it. For example, cleaning the garage I found two giant boxes of puppy pads from when we got Bella (ahem, a few years ago now) and never used because she was potty trained! Why do we still have these?!? So I sold them! I took an entire carload full of stuff to Goodwill to donate. Usually I give stuff to the Vietnam Veterans but I wanted the stuff gone asap so I just drove it to Goodwill. It felt so good to get rid of things!

We have other stuff to donate but I think we need to call Habitat for Humanity. We have an old medicine cabinet that is still pretty nice, some other house construction stuff…it seems better to donate that stuff there.

Now, on to March:

1 ) No Desserts Monday – Thursday Nights

This one is going to be HARD. I have such a sweet tooth. But I really need to reign it in. I was under so much stress with some stuff that’s been going lately that I was really out of control with eating chocolate at home. It was bad. I gained a few pounds in the last two months as a result (2 since December). DAMMIT.

So I am going to make a valiant effort to not eat sweets during the week. Wish me luck!

2) Register for a few 5k Races

There are two 5k races I want to sign up for with the Portland Parks & Rec $5 5K series.I want to register for those and I may look at some other races for this fall. I think it would be fun to do the Halloween Run Like Hell 5k. That was my first race ever (many years ago). It might be cool to do it again!

3) Drink 80 ounces of water every day.

I’m hoping this will help me with some of the issues I’ve been having: dry winter skin, feeling dehydrated, maybe it will help curb my appetite a bit.

I currently drink somewhere between 24 ounces and 40 ounces at work and I drink a sparkling water with lunch and dinner. But I can definitely be doing better.

4 ) Learn how to use my new Pressure Cooker!

I am SO excited about this. I have a bunch of recipes I’ve been saving to try once I got one. I am especially excited about making hard boiled eggs. I’m also curious about making soups and stews. If you have a favorite recipe, let me know!

We ran our first 5k as a family! We had signed up for two races this year, same ones as last year. Last year we didn’t get to run them. I wasn’t ready postpartum for the first race, and last year the Westmoreland race happened on the first super rainy day of the year. I was bummed last year that I missed both races.

Michael and I were honestly unsure if we’d be able to run this race. Saturday the winds shifted and the smoke from the Gorge Fires was back in Portland and it was AWFUL. So bad I couldn’t be outside and actually felt kind of sick and wheezy in my house. The weather was also predicting rain! So we were basically just waiting to see what it was like Sunday morning. Lucky for us, the winds shifted and the air was clear.

I’ve been running a lot with Logan on my days off. We usually do a 4.15-4.6 mile loop depending on how I’m feeling, so I felt like a 5K wasn’t a big deal. This was a very different kind of terrain though!

The race was two laps around Westmoreland Park. It was on all kinds of terrain. There was bark dust, gravel, pavement, grass, dirt, pathways….you name it, we ran on it!

Logan looks grumpy, but he did great on the race! We started out together as a family. Michael hasn’t been running much this summer–instead he’s been mostly biking.

The start line was on the grass. The people with strollers started towards the back. The beginning of the race was a bit frustrating. It was very congested and slow and I could go faster but ended up getting stuck behind people walking so I could get around them until it opened up a bit. It was harder to maneuver around people with the stroller. But once everyone set their own pace it wasn’t as congested.

I ran with Logan for just under 1 mile and then Michael took over. We ran together for a bit and then Michael passed me. I had planned on taking the stroller back but Michael smoked me and I never really caught back up with them! Bummer. 🙁

I had to run a little slower than normal because the path was so uneven. I was really worried about twisting my ankle or stepping wrong and falling. So I took it easy and just went a little bit slower. The uneven ground and different terrain also made it a harder run for me. I felt my muscles really working a lot harder than normal. What can I say? I am used to city running!!

I took a few short walking breaks (less than 30 seconds each) and my knees felt a little tight and achy but I kept going. When I was starting to feel a bit worn out, the above song came on my playlist and gave me a little boost.

I kept going and was finally about half a mile from the finish. I sped up a little bit to finish strong and saw Michael and Logan at the finish. They came around and then joined me back on the race path so we could cross the finish line together as a family! Yay!! That made me really happy!

Logan and I got some post-run bananas!

We wanted to hang around to wait for the raffle winners but Logan was way past naptime and starting to melt-down so we left. It was a great family event!! I loved that we could all run together!

Final stats:

Michael ran his 5k in about 32 minutes. My time was 37 minutes or so. I’m pretty happy with my time considering the terrain was so hard to run on and I pushed the stroller for part of it. But other than that, great outcome!